Arts Week – Europe!

In class 8, our focus for Arts Week has been around the continent Europe. We have looked at the various landmarks, popular foods in different countries and we have also identified a variety of animals that are native to Europe.

The children have thoroughly enjoyed making a range of artwork out of different media. We started the week by recreating a snowy mountain scene just like the Alps! We used various materials such as ear buds to paint the white snow drops and we cut out triangle shapes of different sizes from green painted newspaper as the trees. At the end of the lesson, we had a class discussion about the effects that global warming is having on the French Alps and the children were excellent at contributing their ideas and thoughts! We then painted our King’s crowns and we assembled them at the end of the week. In the afternoon, the Year 2s painted tulips and the Year 1s painted a hedgehog. Both groups used forks to recreate the tulip bud or the hedgehog spikes! Did you know that tulips are grown in the Netherlands and they grow 3 billion bulbs every year? At the end of the day, we discussed what Eurovision was and the children then learned the song ‘Spaceman’ by Sam Ryder who was the winner in 2022! The children couldn’t wait to perform to the rest of KS1 later on in the week!

On Tuesday, it was time to get messy! Using clay, we created pretzels, croissants and pizzas (with our own toppings!). We had to carefully blend the parts together using water to ensure they wouldn’t fall off when they dried. Then, we followed Miss Payne’s step-by-step guided in drawing a seagull. Some children even added a fish to the seagull’s mouth! In the afternoon, the children created Spanish dancers using paper plates and felt tip pens. They added a picture of themselves to the face to make it look like they were the Spanish dancer! They also created a lovely owl sitting on a branch collage using materials such as cotton wool to create the owl’s body.

On Wednesday, we used oil pastels to colour in our seagull drawing. The children focussed extremely hard on ensuring that they were colouring within the lines as this is slightly trickier with oil pastels! After that, we discussed the artist Van Gogh and we continued using oil pastels to replicate his famous sunflower drawings. The finished result looked amazing! We then painted the background for our landmark silhouette creation that we are doing later on in the week.

On Thursday, we learned our dance with Mr Stretton which we will perform later on in the week to the other KS1 classes. We learned a flamingo dance which is popular in Spain. We really focused on the arm movements and ensuring we are placing our hands in the correct position. In the afternoon, we completed a collage in pairs as they were quite large! Half of the class did a collage of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the other half of the class did a surfboard. The children had to carefully cut the small pieces and they had to think carefully about the colours.

On Friday, created an image of the Northern Lights. We discussed how the Northern Lights happen and where they happen. We used chalk on black paper and we first drew the mountains and ground and then used the chalks in a stroking motion to create the Northern Lights effect. After this, we painting our clay models that we made earlier in the week. The children focussed incredibly hard on adding the detail to make them come to life! Finally, we added the silhouette of the famous European landmarks to our painted backgrounds and we completed some symmetry animal paintings.